You Can't Schedule Creativity: Putting Inspiration Into Your Outlook Calendar
Creation can't be forced, but it can certainly be encouraged gently.
Welcome to the Scarlet Ink newsletter. I'm Dave Anderson, an ex-Amazon Tech Director and GM. Each week I write a newsletter article on tech industry careers, and specific leadership advice.
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Today I’m going to talk about tinker gnomes. Well, at least I’ll start off with gnomes. But I promise I’ll digress into other topics after I’ve covered gnomes.
Back in the late 90s, I was in Michigan at my University. As University students tend to do, I played various computer games. This included things like Command & Conquer, but I also played online text based MUDs. Essentially, you play a fantasy character in a fantasy world (frequently Dungeon & Dragons based), and fight other characters.
Particularly for people who code, having a text-based game was a blessing. I wouldn’t dream of being able to write a game like World of Warcraft because I know nothing about 3D modeling, graphics, or physics collisions. Sounds complex.
But a text game? Wildly easy to change. And the MUDs I played were written in C, which was the primary language taught in my computer science classes at school. Not too long after playing a couple of these games, I was accepted as a volunteer coder. I would help fix and build new features for these games.
It was a great experience, and I learned a lot. Supporting a moderately large hacked up software game with a number of volunteer non-expert programmers is a lesson all on its own.
At one point, I came up with an idea to build a “tinker” ability for those who played tinker gnome characters. I wanted them to be able to modify items slightly, but randomly. However, the way items were modeled in the game made my random tinker ability idea complex to write. I refused to make a list of a hundred if/then statements, so I spent days trying to write a generic but random way of modifying items. I couldn’t figure it out.
Then a few nights later, I had a dream. In that dream, I had written the perfect tinker ability. I remember a feeling of satisfaction as I read the code and looked at how beautiful it was designed.
When I woke up, I could still see the exact organization of the code. And I remember the feeling of pleasant surprise when I thought through it and suspected it would work. I sat down, wrote down what I’d dreamed, and it was perfect. It was a beautiful piece of well-organized code which accomplished exactly what I’d hoped. It was something I could be proud of.
What happened?
There are two basic ways our minds approach solving problems. One is a step-by-step calculated approach, and one is a creative process where our minds seek new ways of accomplishing our goals.
I had tried to calculate and solve my tinker coding problem, but the solution was found when my mind approached it subconsciously and creatively. And that’s the same magical process which creates some of the most valuable work in our career.
Our biases.
I spent a dozen years at Amazon in management. When I think of delivering results (a deep focus at Amazon), what mechanisms do I think of?
I think of estimates and story points. I think of project plans, and critical paths. I think of budgets and due dates.
Every one of these things is an attempt to quantify and specify exactly what will be done, at what time, with what cost. And this attempt is absolutely critical, and during my time as a leader there, a good portion of my time was spent on these mechanisms.
However, what tends to be undervalued or understated is the process of creative problem-solving.
How many times has a 1-week project stretched to 5 weeks because the work simply isn’t predictable?
I’ve stood in the shower 6-months after a difficult project finished, and a different (and better) way to approach the project becomes obvious.
When we work in corporations, we index heavily on measurable and calculable things. We brag about being data-driven. We ask what the measurable key results will be after a launch.
But what we don’t understand is inspiration. Creativity. I mean, you can find a lot of material online suggesting that inspiration can strike anywhere. I’ve seen them recommend (for example) that having potted plants on your desk helps. But I thought it’d be more useful to give practical advice.
In particular, that creative work generates a ton of the value in our careers. But how can we be creative, beyond just waiting for inspiration to strike?